Every writer who aspires to be published needs to know the finer detail when it comes to publishing a book. You may have ideas for a book but may not know how to translate the book from a computer screen into print or online. Now with social media there are many opportunities to write, share and publish a story and interact with an audience. In general, there are two ways of publishing your story: The Traditional Way or The Self-Publishing Method

Before we get to the above two ways of publishing, let us first discuss the pre-requisites for your book.

Choose a topic

Here you need to write whatever ideas pop in your mind, professional or personal. If you plan to write non-fiction, pick a topic you are knowledgeable about. For fiction, you need to have a mind that can wander, your own experience can inspire you and most importantly be a story-teller.

Write a Book

Let me be upfront, you do not need to have an extensive vocabulary, but you definitely need a clear, concise way with words, to communicate in an engaging manner. Most important you need to devote your time and set a time frame to complete your manuscript.

The Post Team Tip: Set a goal each day to write a certain number of words

Edit your book:

Find someone who can edit your book, you may be the most fantastic writer but you still need an editor to polish your work. Before sending it to an editor you may wish to send to someone to read and check it and also give you feedback. Warning, you need to be thick skinned and accept the fact that you need these changes that your editor has made, if you want your book to be published.

Choose a Title and Cover of the Book:

This is crucial you need to have a Title that will grab the reader’s attention: short but eye-catching. For the cover, do not use stock photos, spend some money and invest in a professional design.

Now let’s go back to publishing a book:

In the Traditional Way: you need an agent, editor and publisher, this is the place where you can often face rejection. You will need to be constant in your approach. You might have read stories of great writer’s manuscripts rejected and later they made it to the Top bestseller list. In this method, you do not need to pay for publishing, the profits of the books will go to the publishing house and you will earn royalties on each copy of your book sold.
Self-Publishing: is the new way of getting your book published. However, you need to pay to get your book published, so now anyone who has a book can publish and sell a book, this does not mean you can write any odd book and think it will sell. Self-Publishing gives you an opportunity to present your book to the world. There are many Self-Publishing companies.

Last but not the least you have the social media to promote your book by engaging readers, arranging giveaways, sending a few free books to people interested in the genre you have written and making them write reviews on the big sites like GoodReads, Amazon and Blogs. It will be good if you have a blog of you own to promote.

So now what are you waiting for, you have ideas, thoughts in your head, write them and publish a book.